


H is for Home

by OtakuElf



Series: YADAA (Yet Another Dragon Age Alphabet) [8]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: F/M, Homesickness, Loss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-22
Updated: 2014-12-22
Packaged: 2018-03-02 20:27:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2825099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OtakuElf/pseuds/OtakuElf





	H is for Home

_Home. What is home, and where will I find it?_ Hawke had nothing else to do as she waited. Bethany was gone. Carver was gone. Mother was gone. Marion Hawke was as alone in the mansion in Hightown as she could be with two dwarves and an elven serving staff. And the dog.

At least Carver was still alive. She’d gotten a letter from him, short and blunt, from Amaranthine. So he was home. In Ferelden. Hawke thought that perhaps she should ask Anders what Vigil’s Keep was like. A big fortress. Hopefully not like the Gallows. Hawke hated to think of ending up there.

If it were just templars like Ser Carver, or Knight-Captain Cullen, or Emeric or Thrask, then she thought it might be something she’d enjoy. She liked them. Hawke thought they liked her as well, in spite of her being a mage. Nothing could convince Marion Hawke that those templars...well, Ser Carver was dead, and Ser Emeric, but the others must know she was a mage. They’d seen her fight, after all.

Alrik, though - Hawke was happy he was dead. No. The Gallows could never be home. She’d looked at that young girl - just trying to get home to see her parents - and imagined Bethany in his grasp. It made Hawke glad they’d taken care of that bastard who was tracking the Starkhaven mages as well. Bethany, her face slack with Tranquility. Hawke tried to imagine Malcolm Hawke as Tranquil. Impossible. Father had been too full of life. Anders was full of life, too. 

Two lives, actually. Not that Justice seemed alive to Hawke when she thought of him as a spirit. What had Merrill said? “All spirits are dangerous, Anders. I just don’t make the mistake of thinking that any of them are tame.”

Father had read her a story once, long ago. He’d read her lots of stories, but she was thinking of this one in particular now. The hero had said that once you save someone, save their life, you’re responsible for them forever afterward. Merrill. Merrill was one of those that Hawke felt responsible for. The Dalish did not impress Hawke. They were abrasive, rude, always thinking the worst of even their own people. Marethari had told her own people that Merrill was a danger. Which she was, but no more than any of them were as well. Following blindly what their Keeper told them, even to fall to the varterral. 

What would it be like to live so filled with anger? Granted, they were hunted, and never allowed to remain in one place for long before there was an issue with the locals. Driven off or fought until they were killed. Sounded somewhat like what her family had to deal with for her entire life. Only the Dalish didn’t have to worry that the templars were coming to brand them, chain them up in the Gallows if they decided not to kill them. Granted, the Elvhenar had had their entire culture taken away eons ago. Funny thing about the mages having had their lives taken away eons ago as well. 

Now she was sounding like Fenris and Anders. There were more people that Hawke was responsible for. Fenris - no home that he remembered - and Anders - taken from his home as a child, then driven from the Wardens as well. Did all the homeless of the world end up in Kirkwall?

The Dalish came here, she reminded herself, because of an obligation to Flemeth. Asha’bellanar. Hawke had been obligated as well, but Flemeth had mostly used Hawke because the family was on their way to Kirkwall anyway. An entire clan of people uprooted on the whim of a very powerful old lady. Well, no. As much as the Dalish liked to point to their old ways, they were uprooted to begin with. How many of those old ways were in fact old? Hadn’t they had to rediscover how to work iron bark and run with the halla? So they were actually new ways? The Dalish were like children demanding that they be given their due without being willing to work together with the rest of Thedas to create the world they wanted. Even if the entire world was against them. 

No, arguing with herself about the Dalish was just plain foolish. Arguing with Merrill was an experiment in frustration. Merrill would agree to disagree, but then keep bringing the argument up. Niggling along at Fenris or Anders until Hawke wanted to grab them all by the ears and crash their heads together. They were none of them innocent.

Merrill had not asked about Carver in some time. Hawke felt the absence of both Bethany and Carver like a maddening toothache. Carver had been so gone on the tiny Dalish woman. Marion had watched him like a huge mabari pup trying to make friends with a kitten. What would have happened if he’d just told Merrill that he was interested in her?

Well, probably Merrill would have told him she wasn’t interested in anyone who was not part of their pure culture. That was a sad thought. That something so intangible would keep them apart. Again, the Dalish - so angry at children of mixed race. So angry at the “flat ears” - people of their own race who chose to live away from the Dalish. They were all descendents of Arlathan, weren’t they?

It was like what Varric was telling her about the brands and casteless in Orzammar society. How could any culture look at elements and think they were less than people? It brought the whole round robin back to mages, so far as Marion was concerned.

Which brought her back to thinking about home. And this big place that was very much no longer a home. She’d bought it for Mother. Leandra had been so pleased. If Mother had not been so angry at Gamlen for stealing the inheritance, she’d probably have invited the man to live with them. Hawke had endured enough of cleaning Gamlen up from his drunken visits to the Blooming Rose. She didn’t want to have to deal with that here in Hightown. Nor did she want Bodahn or Orana to see that, let alone clean up after it.

Bodahn had spoken to Marion about taking Sandal to Orlais. At least Sandal couldn’t be made Tranquil or sealed up in the Circle. Bodahn had told her a Circle had tried to do that once. It had not worked out for either side.

So, thinking now about Fenris and his lack of family, lack of a home. That run-down mansion in Hightown, near the de Launcet’s, was little more than a shelter. The roof was going to fall in some day. It had a wine cellar - Marion had seen it - but not a functioning kitchen. The jakes out in the garden needed to be redug as well. It was a health hazard waiting to happen. Fenris used the public baths instead of the enormous tiled monstrosity in his house.

That was something Marion appreciated. None of her friends were unclean. Isabela might carry the odor of drinking and sex from time to time, but not for long. Anders was scrupulous in his washing. He’d lectured her on kissing the dog as well. “Do you know how many germs you’re giving the dog, Hawke?” She’d thought he was serious for a while. He was always trying to make her laugh.

Anders and Varric. Maker, but Hawke was glad to have the two of them as friends. It was something to watch the pair play off against each other. Add Fenris to the mix and she never knew what madness and hijinks might erupt at the big table in Varric’s palatial quarters at the Hanged Man.

Varric - now, Varric had a home. The Hanged Man was his. It would not be the Hanged Man without Varric in his suite of rooms. Varric, who had no desire to return to Orzammar. Varric, who took care of his brother, driven insane by that blighted red lyrium idol. Varric, who took care of Anders and Merrill, even when they did not know he was doing so. Hawke wondered if Varric had extended that unseen oversight to her as well. Certainly he had been watching her, knew all about her, long before they had become partners.

Hawke didn’t want to think of a life where she couldn’t walk down the stone steps to Lowtown and Varric, to tell him the latest crazy adventure she’d had while walking on Sundermount. This was a man who had given Merrill a ball of twine so that she could find her way home to the alienage. Who was probably still paying for the Viscount’s flowers, and ensuring that the Carta did not attack the Dalish woman when she wandered at night.

Varric was like her. Like Hawke. Caring for those whom she had saved, had taken on. Hawke knew that they all - Aveline and Donnic, Fenris, Isabela, Merrill, and Anders - visited Varric, much as they stopped by Hawke’s house in Hightown. Even Sebastian did, and the Chantry brother was well aware that Varric did not particularly like him. 

Of course, you did not always have to like family. Look at Gamlen. Carver and she had had their difficulties too. But she’d move heaven and earth for Gamlen if she needed to. And more. She’d move the void and Thedas and the Archdemon and the Divine for Carver. Anders swore that Carver would be fine. If anyone was set to thrive in the Wardens, it would be Carver. And, as Anders reassured her, the Blight was over.

Anders reassured her. Even as he told her that things were awful and terrible, and to stay away from him, Anders tried to calm her about the world. Foolish man. He needed her protection. Hers and Varric’s. Marion was well aware that the dwarf was paying the Coterie to stay away from the free clinic.

It hurt a little, to think of the mage returning to the inky blackness of Darktown each night. Fenris could walk to his house, visit Donnic and Aveline for cards of an evening. Anders had responsibility and a cord tying him to the indigent population. Hawke was not sure that the cord was Justice either. What little that Anders had to remember his life was kept in a trunk in the clinic. Marion had seen it. She’d watched a weeping Anders sorting through the basics in the trunk, measuring what he could not bear to leave behind when he fled his own murderous behavior. Or Justice’s. A small collar - must have belonged to Ser Pounce-a-lot - with a bell, a pillow - tiny and carefully stitched, a pressed flower that Hawke had given him on one of their first trips to Sundermount.

It hurt to think of that time. It pained Hawke to remember the fear in Anders’s eyes when he realized what he’d almost done. What he would have done but for Hawke’s words. One of these days Justice would swallow Anders up completely. Perhaps he would have already if not for Hawke dragging the mage down to the Hanged Man for an evening of Wicked Grace. Marion was aware that Justice disapproved of their frivolities. She firmly believed that Anders needed them to stay sane.

Was this how Father had felt when watching her, Carver, and Bethany grow up? Worrying about their future? Wondering if there was anything he could do to spare them the pain of a mage’s life in the Chantry world? It had molded even Carver, for all that he was not a mage. 

Hawke gave a snort that echoed in the empty house. No, the things she felt about Anders were not how a parent watches over a child. She might, just might, feel about Aveline, Isabel, and Merrill as though they were sisters. She could possibly think of Fenris, Sebastian, and Varric as brothers. The feelings Marion Hawke had for Anders were not sisterly.

Well, now. Being honest - something she could afford to be right now - Marion knew that she was in love with the crazy healer. Hawke had never had time for a relationship. Well, she’d had lots of relationships. But never the type that meant she wanted to stay forever with someone, until death did them part. Again, well now. What was she going to do about this?

Anders would never make the first move. Much as Hawke did not want to admit it, in this, Isabela was likely right. If Hawke wanted Anders, even for the smallest amount of time she could manage before the world blew completely up like gaatlok, then it was up to Marion to force the issue. If Marion was going to force the issue, then part of that was bringing Anders home. To Marion’s house.

Perhaps then the Amell mansion in Hightown would become home.


End file.
